CHILPANCINGO, Mexico – Thirteen people, including five individuals whose burned bodies were found inside a vehicle, were murdered over a 72-hour period in the southern Mexican city of Chilapa de Alvarez, officials said Monday.

Police received a call around 8:00 pm Sunday that a taxi was burning about 500 meters (some 550 yards) from a military checkpoint at the entrance to Chilapa.

Firefighters put out the blaze and found five bodies on the back seat.

Gunmen opened fire early Sunday on a family, killing a pregnant woman and wounding two other people, police said.

The family was traveling in a vehicle that was followed and attacked by two men riding on a motorcycle, a police spokesman told EFE.

On Sunday afternoon, a couple in their 50s was murdered while riding in an SUV and two men were gunned down in the communities of Buenos Aires and Lodo Grande.

Three men ranging in age from 20 to 35 were fatally shot at midday Monday while waiting at a bus stop in the Jaboncito neighborhood.

The Guerrero state government said Saturday it was launching a security operation in the Chilpancingo-Tixtla-Chilapa corridor, an area at the center of a turf war between the Los Ardillos and Los Jefes gangs.

The Los Ardillos gang and the Los Jefes organization, previously known as the Los Rojos gang, have been fighting for control of smuggling routes in Guerrero.

Chilapa de Alvarez is coveted by drug traffickers because it is surrounded by mountains where a large percentage of the poppies used to produce heroin for shipment to the United States are grown.

The only route for smuggling out poppies grown in the mountains runs through the area.

The clashes around Chilapa, located in central Guerrero, have intensified in recent days, with the death toll hitting at least 35.

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